dmayne7

7 other people bowled instead of him, including Patel. Think his 4 day bowling is considered properly part time for now. Nice to see him cashing in with the bat though. Hopefully he can get a big ton before the season is out as that will be a massive boost to his reputation.

Actually I completely take back any sympathy on Bournemouth having just looked at their net spend over the past 3 seasons. Absolutely crazy for a team that has not had any success and is historically a lower league club. The only way you can justify that is with the expectation that you sell lots of players. The most frustrating thing for us is that our net spend has always been relatively small even when we were finishing in the top half nosy seasons. And Tielemans the only player I would argue we might have been forced into paying over the odds salary wise. The rest is our utter incompetence with inflated wages and lack of commercial income. But yes, there is still a massive problem with how it works. As you say, there is a food chain that will always exist which is fair enough but putting inside the incompetence of those running out club, we're a great advertisment for how building a team sensibly then having steady success is completely pointless with the current rule. Our relatively small transfer spend should have meant that we were never under pressure to sell more than 1 player a summer and keep spending sensibly. Think it's just going to take insane luck and commercial nous for a team to break up the cartel.

Is this genuine? If there was still any doubt about the competency of our decision makers, signing a 30 year old who has never scored goals above the 4th tier, then surely even the most staunch supporter of KP (who isn't completely brainwashed) would see that all is lost.

Might sound like sour grapes but hard to feel that 'sorry' for them. A historically small club with a very small fanbase. Like most smaller clubs, had to endure terrible times but then massively bought their way to success (going up the leagues) and timed it perfectly with the increased financial scrutiny, which has set them up for success. Extremely well run club now so they deserve to be where they are. But we are talking about 1 good season that they've had so with the way they have recruited, every player knows that Bournemouth are a stepping stone on to bigger things, and sometimes they would have just been a mid table PL club. A little bit different with us as we still had to do that when we're were actually successful. Agree with the sentiment as the rules are now all about protecting the big clubs but a club with as limited potential with Bournemouth has to accept that this would be the reality even if there weren't the same rubbish financial rules.

As with last time, it's going to largely come down to how somebody can't reset the mood/culture. Not as many good players as last time but the actual balance is probably better. Striker/CM key and then anything less than playoffs (promotion really) would be a travesty.

I'd have been smack in the middle of whether I want him, angling slightly more to being pleased to get him, but this is what would really concern me. The younger players bit is hard to really judge when he hasn't been in a situation like ours that surely dictates they are utilised a lot.

Yep. I realise this is just a very quick straw poll so totally fair and just a bit of fun, but sadly everything has to be black and white these days. I'm bang in the middle.

You're right that we shouldn't limit where we cast out net by everyone fixates on overseas managers as though they are definitely going to be better. A manager is only as good as his last job and basically every single manager in history has probably failed somewhere.

Pot kettle black much

Crazy that he still hasn't won on the PGA tour. That's going to absolutely destroy him.

Great post. Nothing like a bit of hyperbole to tackle claims that in themselves are hyperbolic. Apart from telling them to f off where are these vicious comments? Haven't seen anything overly personal but even so, it comes with the territory when you are destroying the football club people support. I think you, and many others would benefit from making the distinction between the work that Vichai did and that of Top. I completely disagree with this revisionism that everything Vichai did successfully was down to pure luck as that's obviously not the case, but what good things has Top actually done that weren't simply following on from the work of Vichai (Seagrave for example)? Top has had horrific personal circumstances and we can't underestimate the fact that he may feel emotionally compelled to carry on Vicahi's work, but at this point he should take a step back/get help/sell up because it's been an abject failure.

Sorry, let me rephrase it. There was very little chance for them to display any flair but they did indeed show flair on very rare occasion. Fatawu constantly crosses the ball as that's part of his game anyway. Appointing Dyche is barley going to change the needle in how much players are allowed to express themselves. It's a symptom of modern football but people just have this lazy idea that a British manager equals no creativity whereas a foreign manager will bring loads of excitement. Not denying that a Dyche team could be hard to watch but i think we're a great case study to prove that British or foreign manager, if you've got bad players and even worse ability from a manager to convey their ideas, you're going to watch crap football.

And we've seen flair from this team when? Look at it under Maresca; Fatawu was effectively a wingback at times and whoever played wide was primarily asked to defend as part a structure; the offensive side of the game came second. This was a manager who described football as being like chess, so hardly the setup for players to express themselves. Sadly, it's a modern football thing where wingers are petrified to express themselves or play outside of the team shape.

Exactly. That being a defence of anything this board do is mental

The information that was shared on here was definitely a very small difference in the grand scheme of things. A difference that would easily be made up by increased shirt sales, long term relationship development with Walkers etc.

The same Richie Wellens who's time at the club spawned the phrase 'i blame Wellens'. If there was a bias, it will be against him, not for him. Not as unpopular as some of the current bunch, but certainly not a fan favourite. Yes he has had some jobs where things didn't pan out but he's also done a couple of excellent jobs. He's still a young manager but also pretty experienced. Personally think he'd be a much more interesting candidate than any others we've been linked with.

This might be tongue in cheek but so many people are suggesting it as though he's the only goalkeeper in existence. People mock our recruitment team but they're more than capable of finding somebody worse than him...

You've got to remember that legalities in football are completely different. Sounds like he has signed 2 contracts; 1 that will kick into gear when he is 16 and covers his scholarship, then another that will be enforced when he turns 17. You would assume that the latter is minimum of 2 years (or 3 if that's allowed) with some kind of release clause in there. So that still gives us 2 years from 17 at which point he'll have had a hopefully successful full season in the championship so you'd imagine we'd get into the £20m range at that point (which would be way under his value assuming the best case scenario in terms of his performances). The point is that his pro contract is considered legally binding and would assume it required some element of parental consent. Just like any contract signed in advance of the commencement, you can break it but at great personal cost. Given this is football, if Monga did so and the idea was that the buying club pays him to cover the cost of breaking the contract, that would immediately be flagged (even as corrupt as football is) and would likely mean that we'd get way beyond his contract value from him breaking the contract. You don't have the same freedom of movement in professional sport as a normal job. Long and short of it is, that assuming he does well, we are absolutely in a position to multiply whatever we'd get from a tribunal.

Genuine question; have you watched him play? He is of course a highly technical player but he's got a decent turn of pace, though really it's his strength and physicality that has really impressed me. Tuanzebe (who is a physical specimen) had to resort to fouling him as he couldn't shrug him off the ball. Not expecting him to start every game and get 20+ goal contributions, but would be utterly amazed if he doesn't have an important role to play next year. He's that good. How it translates into end product will be the real test.

Many of their fans were making comparisons in terms of his profile to Modric, which I can kind of see. Best position is definitely as an '8' as he's got such a good engine and willingness to get stuck in, feels a bit of a waste to play him as a 10. If he's here next year, would like to see him in that role especially considering we could have actually have loads of good options in the other roles he plays.

Oh yeah, it definitely will be. He'll still be on his youth contract so a few hundred a week maybe (though guess they could put him on a fair bit more), but would imagine when he hits 17 and the pro deal is fully in effect, he'll be earning a minimum of £5k a week but in his special case (and our love of big contracts), 5 figures plus .

Just go clarify what that means on practice, it essentially means he's treated as though he already has that professional deal so anybody who wants him now, will have to sign him in the way that they would with any pro player (i.e. offering us a few that we deem acceptable). I do wonder whether he has got a very low release clause in there or the pro deal is only a couple of years. But that's something to whinge about another day!

That's absolutely not true. Lots of people were frustrated that we had yet again blown such a strong position in the league and it was basically Iheanacho who bailed Rodgers out (then decided to immediately bench at the start of next season so great management). The season before when we also blew it, that was where lots of things conspired against us so less of a bottle job. The second 5th place was a failure entirely of our own making. From a PR perspective, we absolutely could not have sacked Rodgers then even though there were a couple of people calling for his head, but the obvious issues were there and were being pointed out. But after that Forest game, he should have been sacked and lots felt it then. People will talk about a European semi final but that was after falling out of the EL in which we were joint favourites with Napoli, so anything less than winning that was a failure. And we went from something like 13th with 3 games to go, to finish 8th when there was no pressure and it didn't really matter. I think we were something like 17th in the expected points table that season which shows you how absolutely woeful we had been and that it was just the quality of players at our disposal bailing us out.

As you said, hard to probably work out with the fact that every fee is undisclosed but looks like a lot of your estimates are on the low side. Probably better to have the highest estimate as it makes it slightly more palatable and less depressing when we can't sell them, if the book value is the reason

Great to see him score and a really well taken goal with that reaction. Seems like a great kid but can't see him getting close to the level Albrighton is at. Marc was a very exciting young player for Villa who then needed a bit of a reset. Kasey has come nowhere near the level Albrighton was at a similar age. He looked better in the last few games as he's got a really good knack for finding good positions but the pace of the game looked way beyond him at times, to a degree that I've never seen of a player in a Leicester shirt. Think his game intelligence and hard work will allow him a good career but would be very surprised if that's at the top level.